Tag Archives: Illustrator

I completed the kickstarter video and I am quite proud of myself for doing so because initially I hated doing the lip sync animation. I don’t know how some people do it, because only having 1 minute and 12 seconds was a lot. However, once I actually watched it back I was really satisfied with the outcome, and look forward to trying it again in the future.

I watched a really straightforward tutorial for how to create the lip sync. Initially I was going to attempt to use shapes and morph the mouth using different keyframes but this proved both problematic for creating the mouth shapes that had teeth and it didn’t look right.

So watching the tutorial you simply create the layers of different phonemes in illustrator, bring them into after effects and make each layer one key frame. Each keyframe pays after the other and then you just cut the comp down to the correct time.

Once you add the slider, expression and control (watch the video for how) you simply slide the slider until you get the appropriate phoneme and key it.

However, I noticed (prior to receiving Danny’s proper character versions)that I had forgotten to make the layer 3D so there was no shadow from them and also they don’t blink. Another issue is, I designed the characters in photoshop and thought I turned off the white background layer but apparently hadn’t, leading me to key out the white background and subsequently removing the whites of their eyes. Whoops.

I rectified these mistakes in the final version, although just before I hit render I thought I had gone deaf. It turned out at some point when editing the video I deleted the narration so I had to bring it back in and edited it again and try and match it up with the lip sync. Nothing is ever straightforward with me. Anyway… Here’s the kick-starter:

Danny did the concept art for this, (which you can see in the background and the tow main characters at the front).

I’ve been learning quite a bit about after effects the past few months and when Danny and I discussed creating the logo for, the then, Faolen Studios it came in handy.

Danny liked the idea of a jumping wolf design and so I created this.

I firstly drew the shape of the wolf jumping in Illustrator then went into after effects. I made a black background, added a layer with triangular particles flying out and then brought in the wolf as a new layer and changed the alpha settings.

Then when I was satisfied with how the particles looked in the wolf and that there were no gaps, I rendered out a frame as a .jpeg.

However, after thinking about it, Danny thought it was too detailed so I bumped up the particle size and got this.

Now Danny has created this logo, (not the finished version). Also trying to think of a new name for the company at the minute it is now Blu Q Studios.

I forgot. When panicking about the turning head, one of my solutions as I mentioned was doing a rotoscoped version of turning Malcolm’s head, but after discounting that idea and considering the feasibility of doing a 3D head in after effects having done something similar with the Paper Plane animation and the Map animation (both found in Placement > Hunting category)… I got rid of Malcolm’s Hair. I figured it would be too difficult to add that as 3D on top of all the work I have to right now.

The version on the right is when he is about to attack Officer Dolos so I’m rigging his arms and legs in After Effects as I found out how to do when creating my walk cycle (found in Placement > Hunting category)

Here is the lamp morphing into a monster. I don’t like that it goes over itself and I don’t fully understand why it’s doing this. I can move the points on the shape but it still seems to just fold over itself regardless to get to the next shape.

I intend to have the transformation process obscured by a fast blur and have the stages moved closer together at a later stage and hopefully that will, if not fix the problem, at least obscure it.

I need to really focus on the animatic at them moment so I’ll return to this issue at a later date.